Above the Clouds

☞ Sobering, for sure. One small sample: ‘[The failure of IndyMac Bank] will deplete a tenth of the $53bn reserve of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. The FDIC has some 90 ‘troubled’ lenders on watch. IndyMac was not one of them.’ (And note that Mauldin isn’t optimistic in the short run – he says things are worse than they appear.) Don’t sell your RSW.

BOREF

Bob: ‘Sorry to be the one to inform you Andy. BOREF just lost value because Roche Bay handed over to Advanced Explorations another 20% of their future profits. They are now down to 30% from 50%. They say easy come easy go but so far no come just go :)’

☞ Well, not exactly. According to the press release, if the deal is consummated, Roche Bay will also get $3.5 million in cash and a further 6 million AXI shares. And AXI only gets to its maximum stake in the project if it meets certain goals. And the AXI deal, as I understand it, only covers Roche Bay’s Eastern deposits.

PHONETAG

Michael Axelrod: ‘Nice idea but it seems a little pricey at $30 a month. I use lingo which provides universal calling anywhere in the US and Canada for a flat rate. Voice mail is then sent out as an audio file attached to an email. You can keep all your voice mails in a folder and scroll to the one you want to hear. With Lingo you can program your phone system. I have it ring my home phone and my cell phone simultaneously so now I just give out one telephone number. You can also do forwarding and many other things.’

☞ Okay, but what I loved about phonetag – even though I’m not springing for it myself – is the way it transcribes your voicemails, and with pretty astounding accuracy, given what it has to deal with. (Not every caller speaks clearly; and it must instantly differentiate between a deep-voiced Atlantan and a nine-year-old calling from Bah Hahbuh (a town, with R’s, in Maine.)

I like that phonetag would let me tie all my ridiculously-too-numerous phone numbers into a single voicemail account. But, at least so far, I’m just not persuaded it’s worth the setup time or, yes, the $360 a year. (For less than that, ‘You can help an entire community build a future free from poverty.’ But for some, this $360 could enhance productivity by more than enough to pay for itself and help two of those communities. And, of course, it is the kind of luxury that is wonderfully light on the land, requiring no materials or energy to produce, package, ship, and, one day, dispose of.)

AN OVERVIEW

Jim Hayes: ‘You write, ‘the earth is an island or spaceship.’ There is a movement called the ‘overview effect.’ the book has been out for a while, but a movement is growing. Maybe a consciousness-raising is in order?’

☞ I’m glad I clicked that link. And though the movement is born of the space program (‘when you go around the Earth in an hour and a half,’says astronaut Rusty Schweikart, ‘you begin to recognize that your identity is with that whole thing’), its Declaration ends with a quote from Socrates: ‘Humanity must rise above the earth, to the top of the atmosphere and beyond. For only then will we understand the world in which we live.’